Car vs. Auto vs. Automobile vs. Motor Vehicle

The US (still) is a car driven society... How do people in different regions address their motorized idols?



The general pattern was that car and auto dominated but were clearly no. 1 and 2, in that order. The other terms were way behind. Let's see the ranking of each term by states:








Car and auto saw little differentiation in regional usage patterns. Car was no. 1 in Florida and the least Google popular in Montana and Kentucky. The no. 1 state for automobile was Arizona while Louisiana came in last. Note that New Mexico was one of the lowest in marked contrast with its neighbor Arizona: odd! Alabama stuck the most with automobile, North Dakota the least. Finally, motor vehicle was most popular in New Jersey very closely followed by Arizona again. The term was least in use in the car maker state par excellence: Michigan.

Car vs. Train vs. Ship vs. Bicycle vs. Airplane

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of train in all years.
car or auto 3.82
train 1.00
ship or boat 0.46
bicycle 0.20
airplane or aeroplane 0.14

Today, a mode of transportation popularity contest! Automobile is king, as expected. Airplanes come in last, something I hadn't expected. Instead, trains are quite popular. Note that, as usual for Google Trends, the bottom section tracking news stories shows only the "simple words," not the ones with variants—or compounds spelled with more than one word, for that matter. Let's hope they enable that in the future.

I think I'll drop the list of news stories from now on. I don't think they added much. However, I'm trying something new today: combining the words with a few type countries. Google Trends uses IP address information from server logs to make a best guess about where queries originated.


Scale is based on the average traffic of train from United States in all years.
car | auto 8.50
train 1.00
ship | boat 1.40
bicycle 0.40
airplane | aeroplane 0.30

In the US, cars are even more dominant and for some reason ships overtake trains while airplanes do marginally better too.


Scale is based on the average traffic of train from France in all years.
car | auto 3.64
train 1.00
ship | boat 0.14
bicycle 0.02
airplane | aeroplane 0.02

In France, cars lose some of their luster and trains are a clear second.


Scale is based on the average traffic of car | auto from Egypt in all years.
car | auto 1.00
train 0.02
ship | boat 0.06
bicycle 0
airplane | aeroplane 0

The big difference in Egypt is the lack of interest in bicycles and airplanes. The car is again first though, followed at a distance by ships.


Scale is based on the average traffic of car | auto from China in all years.
car | auto 1.00
train 0.15
ship | boat 0.16
bicycle 0.02
airplane | aeroplane 0.01

Last but not least: China. Compared with Egypt, trains and ships are both a little bit more popular.